Portfolio review with Claude and IBKR

Updated: 2026-10-05 22:11 CEST

canary mcp lets Claude review an Interactive Brokers portfolio from the local IB Gateway or TWS session you already use. The assistant gets structured account, position, technical, rulebook, source-health, proposal, opportunity and order-lifecycle context, and no execution authority.

A review can also draw on the discipline tools. canary_rules runs a 19-rule daily checklist over the live book (concentration, premium caps, theta budget, expiry runway, earnings coverage, hedge integrity, margin headroom) and names the offenders. Missing data counts as unknown, never as a pass, so a cold daemon cannot flatter the book. In the terminal, canary policy reports drawdown against a risk policy you wrote yourself, and canary recon checks the daily broker statement against your declared ledger.

The review stays separate from execution. You collect account and market evidence, name the missing inputs and decide which questions deserve a closer look.

Who this is for

Use this workflow if you already trade through IBKR and want a second screen that reads the portfolio, organises the evidence and states the next questions plainly.

It fits traders who care about:

• exposure by underlying, beyond a flat position list
• options delta, theta, gamma, vega and expiry concentration
• stale or delayed market data before acting on a quote
• named holdings whose technical or liquidity evidence deserves review
• portfolio risk within the daemon's market and source-health context

The public MCP tools are read-only. They do not preview, place, modify, cancel or exercise orders. That boundary keeps the review clean. You collect the evidence first, decide what deserves attention next and handle any execution through a separately approved path.

What Claude can inspect

A good portfolio review needs more than balances and positions. Through canary mcp, Claude can call:

• canary_brief for Canary's assembled Review and Ready overview, including inputs it could not read
• canary_account for net liquidation, buying power, cash, margin and daily P&L
• canary_positions for holdings, option legs, Greeks and per-underlying grouping
• canary_technical for daily evidence on explicitly named stocks or ETFs
• canary_rules for ranked rulebook findings and unknown inputs
• canary_policy_check for whether your limits and policy files add up against each other and the account
• canary_proposals and canary_opportunities for read-only Action Queue candidates
• canary_reporting_performance, canary_reporting_fx and canary_lending_fees for statement returns, the currency effect and lending income
• canary_settings, canary_trading_status and the three order-lifecycle tools for observed state

The assistant should treat no single tool result as a trade signal. The value comes from combining the evidence, naming the uncertainty and showing which follow-up checks would change the decision.

Use this prompt

Start with the maintained prompt in examples/canary_portfolio_analysis_prompt.md. It keeps evidence, data quality and follow-up questions separate from orders.

Short version to paste into Claude:

Review my IBKR portfolio using the Canary MCP tools. Start with canary_brief,
then inspect account state, positions grouped by underlying, options Greeks,
data quality, and the current rulebook findings. Rank the risks I should
inspect today, explain the evidence behind each one, and separate observations
from possible next actions. Do not place or imply orders.

For a deeper review, use the full example prompt and let Claude choose the MCP calls it needs before it writes the answer.

For a scheduled review built on the daily brief, with source health, confidence and warnings kept intact, use examples/canary_portfolio_stress_prompt.md.

What a useful answer looks like

A strong review is compact, grounded in evidence and explicit about missing data. It should read like a desk note, without the raw stream of tool output.

Sanitised sample:

Executive snapshot
- Account state is usable for review. Buying power and margin are available; no order action was taken.
- The portfolio is concentrated in three underlyings. One options position drives most of the effective delta.
- Two quotes are delayed or outside the regular session, so marks should be treated as review inputs, not live execution prices.

Risk dashboard
- Market regime: risk-on but narrowing breadth. Treat long exposure as acceptable only if single-name concentration is intentional.
- Dealer gamma: near neutral. Do not assume intraday mean reversion from this row alone.
- Options: one expiry dominates near-term theta. Check whether that is intended before adding exposure.

Top findings
1. Underlying A has the largest effective delta after options. The stock line understates the true exposure.
2. Underlying B has stale quote context. Recheck during the next open session before sizing anything.
3. Underlying C has high implied move versus recent realized range. Review whether the option premium is still paying for the risk.

Next review steps
- Re-run the brief when its named source is due for refresh.
- Inspect the dominant option expiry in the paired app before changing the position.
- Review any protection or exercise candidate through its explicit confirmation boundary.

Each pass of this structured review covers current account state, current market context, open uncertainties and the next checks that would make a decision better.

How to install

Claude Desktop users can install the MCP Bundle:

https://github.com/osauer/canary/releases/latest/download/canary.mcpb

Claude Code users can install the plugin:

/plugin marketplace add osauer/canary
/plugin install canary@canary

Shell, Cursor, Continue, Zed and generic MCP users can install the binary:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/osauer/canary/main/install.sh | sh
canary status

Generic MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "canary": {
      "command": "/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/canary",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

You need IB Gateway 10.37+ or TWS running locally and an IBKR Pro account with TWS API access.

Related pages

• IBKR MCP server for the short setup path.
• Claude Desktop install for the MCPB path.
• Working with agents for natural-language workflows.
• MCP tools reference for exact tool schemas.